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Former City Council member and mayoral candidate Helen Gym joined progressive activists in celebrating their movement’s recent successes — including state Rep. Chris Rabb’s win in last month’s congressional primary — during a national political conference in Philadelphia on Friday.
Gym, an outspoken and once-ubiquitous presence in city politics who was seen as a star of the movement nationally, largely retreated from public view after her third-place finish in the 2023 Democratic mayoral primary and has declined interview requests.
On Friday, however, she spoke to a ballroom full of activists at the Netroots Nation conference at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, declaring the advent of a “new democratic order” that champions priorities like affordable housing, racial justice and the abolition of ICE over the “whims of billionaires.”
“While there is so clearly an authoritarian playbook out there built on the exploitation and harm to Black and brown immigrant bodies and lives, the counter to it lies in our ability to nurture a creative resistance and leverage long-cultivated relationships no money can buy and hasn’t yet been written,” she said.
She gave shout-outs to Rabb and several city and state elected officials who are supported by the Working Families Party or Democratic Socialists of America, and said Philadelphia will “anchor the fight” in 2028 over the seat held by U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat who has alienated many on the left.
Asked afterward about what she is doing now, Gym said, “For me, it’s been really important to take the time that I had in office to really reflect on what lessons are really important for communities right now,” particularly those that are under attack.
“While I am really thrilled with all the advancements in the growing movements that are transforming politics here in our city and all across the country… what I spoke about was the importance of communities that are hyper-local, being able to take on authoritarianism, whether it looks like shutting down schools or whether it’s literally ICE in the streets abducting people,” she said.
“I wasn’t supposed to have won”
Gym made the opening remarks at an event Friday and was followed by Councilmember Kendra Brooks of the Working Families Party, Pa. Lt. Gov. Austin Davis and other speakers.
Other Philadelphia officials scheduled to speak at the three-day conference included Rabb, who gave a keynote Thursday evening; state Sen. Nikil Saval, who spoke on a panel about housing; state Reps. Malcolm Kenyatta and Andre Carroll; and councilmembers Rue Landau and Mark Squilla.
Rabb described speaking at the conference as “surreal,” after he previously attended 20 years ago when he was a political blogger and trying to snag interviews with elected officials.
“Little did I know that I would be representing the bluest congressional district in the United States,” he said, referring to his expected victory in the 3rd Congressional District race this November. “There was a trope among the new media class two decades ago that technology would save us and it would be the great equalizer, and I was in that small radical subset that said, ‘no, justice saves us.’ Am I right?”
He discussed researching his ancestors in Philadelphia going back hundreds of years, including an abolitionist clergyman, whose actions inspire him to serve but also remind him how much more progress remains to be made.
“The question I have for you all, Netroots Nation, is are you prepared to fight this fight? I think you are. I know I am, because I wasn’t supposed to have won. I’m a Black Democratic socialist reparationist,” he said, to cheers and applause. “And here we are. And I want to put an emphasis on the we, not me. We, the people.”
Radicalized by hardship
In her remarks, Brooks, who was the first Working Families Party candidate elected to City Council, told her story of becoming politically active around 2011. State education budget cuts led to her losing her job, and she lost her home to a sheriff’s sale. The school district later made plans to convert her children’ s public school into a charter, she said.
“I organized alongside other parents at Edward T. Still Elementary, and against all odds, we won the fight to keep our school public,” she said. “I need y’all to understand what that actually looked like. It looked like parents showing up to meetings after double shifts, elders making food so people can stay late and strategize, children standing at microphones explaining why their school mattered.”
“Once you experience what ordinary people can do together, you stop accepting the unacceptable, and that fight didn’t [just] change me, it changed this city,” she said.
Earlier Friday, Saval spoke on a panel about housing along with officials and activists from Seattle, Phoenix, Los Angeles and New York, including Annemarie Gray, whose organization has helped New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani formulate his housing agenda.
Saval said he first ran for office with a focus on housing creation, justice, and preservation, as well as supporting tenant rights and people’s ability to stay in their homes.
His biggest win has been creation of the Whole Home Repairs Program, which provides grants to low-income homeowners and forgivable loans to tenants to maintain their homes and make efficiency upgrades, he said.
It’s helped preserve 4,000 to 5,000 homes in Pennsylvania, has been replicated in other states, and inspired efforts elsewhere.
“There’s currently a Whole Home Repairs pilot that we helped write that is in Congress that has been passed as part of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing package in both chambers, and God help us, Donald Trump may sign it into law,” he said. “You take your wins where you can get them.”